


What I Like About You (You Really Know How to Dance)

by 221b_hound



Series: Guitar Man [26]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Band Fic, Gen, John dances when nobody is watching, John used to be in a band, Music AU, Sherlock dances when he plays the violin, the gifts of love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-02
Updated: 2013-01-02
Packaged: 2017-11-23 10:54:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,587
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/621317
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/221b_hound/pseuds/221b_hound
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sherlock has a list of things he likes about music and John. John has a list too. It's slightly longer, but more concise.</p>
            </blockquote>





	What I Like About You (You Really Know How to Dance)

**Author's Note:**

> The title is from the song What I Like About You by The Romantics

When Sherlock discovered John’s secret history as a musician and then persuaded his friend to start playing again, he began to keep a list.  Before Moriarty, it was just a thought exercise, a way of stilling his busy mind and focusing on the present. It was a useful way of excising the intrusions of the everyday.

During the Year in Hell, though, Sherlock suspects that the list kept him alive, some days. That year, the list helped him to focus on the reason he was out there fighting this dirty war in the first place; and on what waited at home for him if he succeeded and survived, and could ever return.

Once Sherlock got back to Baker Street, the list was refined. He would add to it sometimes; rearrange it, depending on his mood, his case, the last rehearsal, the latest song. The length of the list varied and the items shifted position – but there were five items that never moved from his list of _What I Like About Music with John_.

  1. Sherlock thinks that the songs John writes are simultaneously the most sentimental and the most marvellous things he’s ever heard. Of course John’s lyrics are rarely maudlin and almost never saccharine. They are sentimental in that they reveal John’s regard for him, and for their friendship, and for the work they do: which is why they are marvellous, of course.  
  
Previously in his life, no-one much held Sherlock in high regard. They liked having nasty problems solved, of course, but they resented him for it. Nobody except Lestrade was ever impressed or valued the mind that produced the results. But John values the mind, the process _and_ the person of Sherlock Holmes and although he won't admit it out loud, Sherlock both buys into and reciprocates the sentiment.  
  

  2. Sherlock is honest enough with himself to know he loves that John writes songs about him. About _them,_ true, and the partnership they have, and about John’s own inner self. But Sherlock is the catalyst, and he _loves_ that. He has not generally been a catalyst for anything creative before. For violence, for contempt, for fear, for exasperation, for justice sometimes, for mockery certainly, but not for anything as constructive as creativity.  
  
(When Sherlock gets older and becomes a father, and allows himself to admit to moments of deep emotion, what he’ll recognise is that in these songs he is a catalyst for John to know and accept his own self in all his glorious facets, as well as for John’s expression of his deep and abiding friendship with Sherlock. At that point, the least humble man in the United Kingdom will feel very humbled by this insight. His ego will remain thoroughly delighted.)  
  

  3. From childhood, Sherlock used music to escape a world tumultuous with data, some of which he didn’t understand. He used it to put his mind – or more accurately his heart – in order.  He acts as though he has control of his emotions, but this is how he managed it for so long. When feelings made him uncomfortable or confused, music gave them a kind of structure, and channelled them outside of himself. It was very effective for the longest time.    
  
Even before The Year in Hell, Sherlock found it surprisingly soothing to play with John, and even with the band for the undercover gig. He found he liked being part of a musical organism rather than having to carry it all himself. He usually liked being the smartest, the best, the most brilliant, the _superlative,_ with everything on his own shoulders. But it was unexpected to discover that it was good, from time to time, to step back, to be part of a greater whole.  
  
During the Year in Hell, however, Sherlock took on so much responsibility he thought the weight of it would suffocate him. The weight of survival. The weight of protecting his friends. The weight of how very, very dangerous and difficult it was to do this. The weight of having to kill and destroy so that someone else could flourish. He’d never before appreciated John’s own capacity to carry such burdens.  
  
After he got home, John and his music allowed Sherlock to feel… lighter.  He could lessen  his burdens, share them even, without having to give them voice.  Music with John and Collared makes Sherlock feel safe and free in a way he cannot articulate properly to himself, let alone to the others, but that’s all right. It seems to work that way for everyone.  
  

  4. Since music became a cornerstone of their lives, John sometimes dances and sings to himself in the flat. He occasionally does it while listening to the radio, but more often while he’s singing his own songs as he completes mundane chores (which are all of them, according to Sherlock).  
  
John jigs about while cooking, doing the dishes, getting dressed for a locum stint at the clinic and while emerging from the shower. (Sherlock has noted that John also sings in the shower, and therefore probably also dances in there, among other things, but hasn’t yet found a plausible excuse to pull back the shower curtain while John is in the shower and find out. Sherlock has very few boundaries when it comes to his flatmate, but he’s discovered that attempting to spring John nude-dancing in the shower is one of them. Well, at least since that one time when John had clearly not been dancing, and then yelled at Sherlock quite a lot.)  
  
While he was Away, Sherlock missed seeing John dancing-while-cleaning. (He doesn’t know that John never did that while Sherlock was gone.)  Sometimes now, Sherlock will make messes just to see what song John will sing to himself while cleaning it up again. Of course, John doesn’t always sing while cleaning. Sometimes he hurls colourful abuse at Sherlock, with complex phrases, unexpected juxtapositions of vocabulary and frankly biologically impossible suggestions. Sherlock enjoys that almost as much as the singing/dancing though, so he still considers it a win.  
  
Sherlock does not point out this habit of John’s to him for fear that John will get self-conscious and stop doing it. He finds John’s household dancing and sotto voce singing both ludicrous and endearing. He doesn’t use the word ‘endearing’ in his head. But he really, really likes the habit.
  5. Playing music with John makes Sherlock feel calm. Centred. Strong. Content. He’s not used to ‘content’.  It’s not the word he uses anywhere but in his head. But in his head, it’s absolutely the right word.



 

John loves playing music with Sherlock too. Before Moriarty, it felt like he was finding himself again. All the parts of himself he thought he’d put away, or had died, came back to life. It felt exactly like that when Sherlock finally returned from the Year in Hell, too, only much, much more vividly, because he knew what he’d lost this time, and its return was like water in the desert; oxygen to the brain, blood to the heart.

John also has a list. It’s both longer and more succinct than Sherlock’s.

  1. John feels close to his mother when he plays music, and Sherlock gave that to him.  
  

  2. John feels more completely himself when he plays. He hadn’t even known he wasn’t whole, having neglected that part of himself for so long, until he rediscovered music. And Sherlock gave that to him.  
  

  3. John is not Sherlock’s sidekick, whatever the press likes to think. They are partners, with different strengths, though obviously, _obviously_ , Sherlock is the genius. But once upon a time, John had been a leader, and like medicine before it, music allows him to lead collaboratively. Doing so nourishes him in a way he didn’t know he needed. He gives thanks to Sherlock for this, as well.  
  

  4. Of the two of them, John is nominally the one who is more in touch with his feelings, but he is who he is. He internalises and he copes. (Or not.)  He doesn’t talk about his feelings much, and when he does, his words are measured. He expresses himself more in what he does than what he says. But the music unmutes his voice in these matters. And Sherlock – apparently unemotional, Spock-like Sherlock – gave that back to him too.  
  

  5. There was a time when John thought that although he wasn’t technically dead, he’d never feel alive again. But now there is this. Working and living with Sherlock makes John feel alive. Playing music with Sherlock makes him feel alive. Alive and happy, connected and whole. John took the gifts that this friendship gave him and made them his own. But first, they were things that Sherlock gave him, and John has less than no problem with that.  
  

  6. No matter how long he lives, it will never not be breathtakingly awesome that the work of art that is the genius Sherlock Holmes likes John’s music and likes to play the notes and sing the words that come from John’s heart and soul. Every time John hears Sherlock play his music, John is awed and delighted and actually also a little bit smug.  
  

  7. When Sherlock is playing John’s music, he sort of dances with his violin. John doesn’t think Sherlock realises he does it. But it’s one of John’s favourite things in the world, to see his friend move and sway with that instrument. To see Sherlock simply enjoy himself. John doesn’t precisely know what gifts his friendship has given Sherlock, but he hopes that this is one of them.



 


End file.
